What are people's experience with Internet-based backup solutions for servers? I have been looking at several vendors for some time (Zmanda, VaultLogix, and AmeriVault are the leading contenders). I am looking for a solution to completely eliminate tape.

I evaluated AmeriVault one year ago and was pleased with the performance, and functionality, but the cost is problematic as we have multi-year retention requirements for 1.5+ TB of data.

Zmanda continues to intrigue me, but have not done a detailed eval yet.

Has anybody used these types of solutions in an enterprise environment? What are your opinions.

I've used Amerivault and was pretty pleased with the service and capabilities. But as you mentioned, the price was prohibitive and we ended up going another direction with less capability but a fraction of the yearly cost.

I'm also looking to eliminate tape, so I'm interested in the answers. I haven't found a one-vendor solution that backs up VMs (ESXi) at the image level and does the right thing when it comes to VSS for backup and restore. A possible fall back option is to use something like Veeam Backup to backup VMs to local storage then use something like JungleDisk or CrashPlan to backup offsite.

I like Jungle Disk Workgroup for workstation backups and for sharing large volumes of information, but it is not a viable solution for large data backups (no dedup, no compression, flie size limits, etc.). Jungle Disk Server is another option we will be looking at, but the overall performance has not been very good (time to backup and to restore).

For backups, we are looking at data only on Linux and Windows regardless of physical or virtual. The key is data on the file system. We prefer to do SQL and Exchange backups to disk and then back those up at the file system level. Much simpler than using a solution with Exchaneg agents or SQL agents.

I like Jungle Disk Workgroup for workstation backups and for sharing large volumes of information, but it is not a viable solution for large data backups (no dedup, no compression, flie size limits, etc.).

We get dedupe and compression. Why do you feel that you are not? At least we believe that we are getting it ;) Have you run tests to see if it is not functioning properly for you?

Not that I would recommend the workgroup product here, but we haven't seen any issues yet using it in its intended role.

Which Jungle Disk product are you using. We have not found JungleDisk Workgroup to be effective for large volumes of data; too slow, no dedup; file size limits.

The file size limit is a big concern/issue for us. You need to go to Jungle Disk server to work around the size limits and dedup issues. We plan to try that. But the performacne I have gotten with Jungle Disk over the past 2 years is just not good enough.

I have not ruled out Jungle Disk Server, but the other options are interesting as well. Also, a solution with a local appliance for disk-to-disk-to-net would be very helpful.

Since you are only backing up data (no OS) take a look at CrashPlan PRO (http://b3.crashplan.com/business/index.html). It gives you multiple backup destinations, it only backs up the changed bytes (not the whole file), it encrypts, and it regularly verifies all data that has been backed up ("guaranteed restore").

The more I think about it, I don't think you would want a dedup feature in the Workgroup product given its intended use cases. That is more of a Server feature. Debateable.

The file size limit is the big issue however, followed by performance.

I'm unable to get to a spot where I can view those right now but I will definitely check that out. I'd be shocked if they weren't doing that on the backend, though. But who knows. I know that we can definitely find out, though.

They not only support Vault2Cloud for $0.49/GB but they also have dedup and all that wonderful stuff, and you don't have to necessarily push to cloud, you can set up a vault in a remote location that it sends dedup'd data to. Also, if in the (god forbid) event that your server room explodes into a firey burningness, they'll load up a DPU with all of your files off their cloud ("RapidRecovery"), and next day it to you, so you don't have to re-download them!

I used Amerivault (now Venyu) at my last gig. They were around $300/mo for 100 GB of storage. At my current gig, we're using SOS which should stand for ShitonShit because it's horrible. Stay far away from this CRAP.

I'm currently looking to get back with Venyu once the ShitonShit contract runs out. We pay almost $7k annually for it and it takes hours to restore just one small spreadsheet or Word doc. Why? Because it catalogues everything before it can restore.

The more I think about it, I don't think you would want a dedup feature in the Workgroup product given its intended use cases. That is more of a Server feature. Debateable.

The file size limit is the big issue however, followed by performance.

Deduplication is available in Jungle Disk Workgroup Edition. The following paragraph is on the workgroup web page that you linked to:

Save time and money with Backup Vaults

Jungle Disk’s unique Backup Vault feature makes backups more efficient and reduces storage costs with compression and a server-grade de-duplication technology that prevents users from backing up the same data twice.

Which Jungle Disk product are you using. We have not found JungleDisk Workgroup to be effective for large volumes of data; too slow, no dedup; file size limits.

The file size limit is a big concern/issue for us. You need to go to Jungle Disk server to work around the size limits and dedup issues. We plan to try that. But the performacne I have gotten with Jungle Disk over the past 2 years is just not good enough.

I have not ruled out Jungle Disk Server, but the other options are interesting as well. Also, a solution with a local appliance for disk-to-disk-to-net would be very helpful.

If you use the older Network Drive option, then there is a file size limit of 5GB.

There is no limit to the total number or size of files you can back up. For the Network Drive feature, there is a file size limit of 5GB. Note that package files on the Mac, such as Aperture vaults or iPhoto libraries are actually directories made up of many files. The 5GB limit does not apply to the total package size, which can be virtually unlimited.

If you don't care about your data, use this combination.. More than likely you'll never get it back..

#1 Store your data on a Serrver 2012 with deduplicaiton enabled

#2 Backup your data to Jungle Disk

#3 Have a disk crash

#4 Cry & Cry & Cry because you realize your data as it's restored from JD is unable to be used by Windows. It shows as corrupt and unreadable.

JD Claims about DEDUP ARE BULLSHIT!! They hose your data, and theen say "Oh too bad about yur lost data.. Let us know if there's anything else we can do to help.." (I'll show you the transcript if you email me..)

I WAS able to get my data back though. Many hours of searching, and learning about symlinks, file attributes, and FSUTIL.. .. if you find yourself in this same boat, email me, I'll help you out of it..

Don't say I didn't warn you!!

0

This discussion has been inactive for over a year.

You may get a better answer to your question by starting a new discussion.